Snitch Factory: A Novel

Table of Contents

 

 

 

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Angels of Catastrophe
Police and Thieves
One Foot off the Gutter
The Romance of the American Living Room
Darkness Throws Down the Sun
Black Wheel of Anger
.

I
t was a bra rash, sweat-patches-under-the-tits kind of a day. Suitable for the commission of manslaughter, and almost perfect for making love at the beach on an old army blanket. But there weren’t any beaches near Mission Street, no white sand or soothing Pacific Ocean breezes. When it was this hot and still, the birds didn’t sing, and the mailman was never on time. The police sirens coming off the freeway were paraphrasing the ringing of the telephone in my cubicle and I lazily reached for the receiver.

“DSS. Charlene Hassler speaking. Who’s this?”

“Hello?”

“Yeah, hello. Who do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

“This is Mrs. Frances Dominguez.”

“Are you on my caseload, Mrs. Dominguez?”

“No, Simmons is my social worker. But he’s a
culo
…we don’t get along too good. He’s mean.”

“Frances, where do you live?”

“On Shotwell Street.”

“What’s the intersection?”

“By where the hardware store used to be.”

I knew the place. It was a block where the roosters
woke you up at dawn; the neighbors kept chickens and pigs in the backyards and pit bulls in their ramshackle garages. There were ancient water towers covered with bougainvillea on Shotwell.

“Okay. What can I do for you?”

“Some nasty business is going down, Mrs. Hassler. I don’t have any cash to buy groceries.”

“What happened?”

“Hell if I know. But can you help me?”

Laid back and unbeatable in the eye of the storm, I answered her:

“That’s what I’m here for. Can you hold the line? I’ve got another call, but I’ll be right back.”

A couple of years ago, every other person in San Francisco had been on the dole. You could’ve found these folks pretty much anywhere: trading records at Ritmo Latino, sipping on ninety-nine cent espressos in Valencia Street cafes or mingling with the other shoppers at the Hwa Lei Market, digging in the bins for edible vegetables, and quietly going about their business, not bothering anyone.

Now you could hardly find anybody, not at the Young Kwang Presbyterian Church, not at the Tai Fung Trading Company or at Los Portales Pharmacy; not their skeletons, nor their ghosts, not a trace of them, as if they’d been disappeared. Extinct, like the buffalo.

Maybe our clients had gone as refugees to another nation, to England, to Finland, to some other welfare state haven. But a few years back, when they had been around, I’d found in myself a memory, a single color that painted the entire picture.

 

A desultory queue was forming next to the ivory pitted walls of the DSS complex on Otis Street. Men, women, and
a few children were strung out like a daisy chain on the sidewalk at the corner of Duboce. They were waiting for the side doors of the building to open up so that everyone could get their monthly box of commodities. Dried lentils, orange bulk cheese, canned meat, Caro’s corn syrup, and a sack of white flour infested with weevils.

The weather was sort of nice; boring with that goddamn heat and smog. The men smoked cigarettes when they could. The women gossiped with each other about who was getting married and most of the kids, they didn’t say much. They just looked at the street, at the cars whizzing by.

You could say those people were lucky; they were getting free food. But the way the men slouched against the fence running the length of the place, the way the women talked, whispering in sandpapery tones, and the way the kids were turned in on themselves: you could see they weren’t grateful for anything.

And there I was, the smallest one among them, a chubby, saturnine girl with deep-set eyes, not understanding the plight of my species, but already knowing that to endure was everything. I did so by climbing the ladder to success. I went to college and did all that academic yes-sir-no-sir shit. I was born to be a drone, but nowadays at the Department of Social Services I’m the lady you have to see to get food stamps.

“Mrs. Dominguez?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for waiting. You want to set up an appointment?”

“I’d like that.”

“How about at your place?”

“You’ll come over?”

“Tuesday’s my first open date.”

“That’s all right.”

“How about at two o’clock. Is that okay?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Your address, please.”

“Nine thirty-two Shotwell.”

“Very good. That’ll be our first interview.”

“Oh boy.”

“See you then, Frances.”

B
art Rubio slipped into the Zeitgeist behind Simmons, Harry Hendrix and Matt Vukovich. He walked over to the bar, stuck his hand in a shirt pocket, and pulled out a wad of five and ten dollar bills. Then he turned around to yell at the last person coming in the door.

“Charlene! What are you having?”

“Bud Light,” I replied.

I wasn’t sure that he’d heard me. Since Rubio drank with Hendrix and Simmons every night, he knew what they wanted. An extra-dry vodka gimlet for skinny Harry, and a gin and tonic for Simmons. Rubio ordered a Pilsner for Matt Vukovich, and while the bartender hurried to serve us, I excused myself and went to use the pay phone.

It was a credible bar, the Zeitgeist. The bartender was this taciturn Pakistani kid who’d give you a beer on the house now and then. The main room, dark and lowceilinged, had a functional pool table, sofas and chairs, places where you could sit and drink without anyone persecuting you. There were some bay windows so you could look out at the traffic on Valencia Street.

The Zeitgeist was conveniently located around the corner from the DSS. If you were a caseworker who needed a
quick drink, this was your pit stop. Of course, there were other types of people in the bar. The rich punks from Orinda with their Euro-cycles parked outside, and the working-class queens who lived upstairs in the rooming house. I put three dimes and a nickel into the telephone and dialed my number, seeing brown eyes and the obstinate pug of my nose reflected on the surface of the metal phone box. It rang six or seven times: was nobody at home? Finally, I got an answer.

“Yeah, what?”

“Frank, it’s me. I’m at the Zeitgeist with Simmons, Rubio, and Hendrix. Why don’t you come over? Rubio’s buying drinks for everybody.”

“You gonna be there for sure?”

“Yes.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

When I got back to the bar, Hendrix was on his second drink. The portly Simmons had walked off to talk to a couple of guys who were sitting in the corner. My beer was waiting for me, and I sat down to take a gulp of it. Rubio watched me slake my thirst, then asked, “What are you doing tonight?”

“Got to do the laundry. You?”

“I need some sleep,” Rubio moaned. “I’m a-glad it’s Friday. This week has been a killer. What do you do for headaches?”

“Vitamins help,” I said.

He was dubious. “Don’t fuck with me, Charlene. Anyway, what did they do for you?”

He was commenting on my height. At work, they called me the human spark plug. Some people thought I was a midget, but that wasn’t so: I was five feet tall.

I was a woman with a 34-D cup and straight auburn
hair that looked special when I used a conditioner on it. I finished off my Budweiser and got another one. Rubio was a smart guy but he didn’t take care of himself. He was underweight, a single man who lived in a hotel room. I don’t know if he liked women, and he had a reputation for being homophobic. We debated the pros and cons of nutrition, minerals, other supplements and health food for the better part of fifteen minutes. As I wondered where Frank was, Rubio looked over my shoulder and smiled.

“You should see this queer who walked in the door.”

“Describe him to me.”

Rubio arched an eyebrow. “Well, he’s got that rangy, weathered look, you know, like he’s been in the streets, turning tricks. He’s about six foot and blue-eyed. And he’s walking over here.”

I took another guzzle of my beer, hunted in my purse for a cigarette, and saw that my nail-bitten fingers were yellow-brown from nicotine. It was time to let Rubio know the truth.

“That’s my husband, Bart, and he’s no queer.”

Frank sat himself down gingerly on the stool next to me and asked, “Who said I was a queer?”

“Rubio did, but he’s willing to buy you many drinks as an apology.”

“Gee, Frank, I didn’t know it was you. Sorry,” Bart gushed.

Nonplussed, my spouse turned to the social worker and gave him a militant look from head to foot. “Happens frequently. Don’t sweat it. Just get me a glass of wine, okay?”

Wagging his head in disbelief, Rubio got up to fetch us more alcohol. Simmons and Hendrix were playing a game of darts in the back. Vukovich had gone across the
street to get a pizza. Because it was Friday night, people were steadily trickling into the Zeitgeist. Frank put a calloused hand on mine and gave me a kiss. “How do you put up with these guys?” he asked.

“It’s not their fault. What do you expect? None of them are getting laid.”

Hendrix began to quarrel with Simmons about who owed money for the drinks. Harry’s voice was high-pitched and could travel long distances. Meanwhile, Rubio came back with our beverages: wine for my husband and another beer for me.

“Here you go, kids,” he said to us, setting the bottle and a glass down on the bar. “Now, if you’ll pardon me, I gotta take a piss.”

Frank picked up his wine and drained it in a swallow. I killed my cigarette in an ashtray, and looked up just in time to see three policemen at the door. The cop in the lead draped a gauntlet-clad hand on his holster and the two patrolmen behind him, flanking him to the left and right, already had their guns drawn.

One of the guys Simmons had been talking to earlier, a Mexican dope dealer sitting at a corner table, saw the cops and dashed out the side entrance onto the pavement. He went into the street, dodging the cars and sprinting across Duboce.

The three lawmen went back through the front door, lumbering onto the sidewalk waving their guns. They went to the corner, thinking they’d ambush their man there. But the dealer saw them waiting for him at the stoplight and he scooted, turning right on Woodward Street. The policemen, certain the guy was on Valencia, went running in another direction.